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The Art of Life Series 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The New Humanism 
A Book of Meditations 
Moral Education 



THE ART OF LIFE SERIES 

Edward Howard Griggs, Editor 



The Use of the Margin 



BY 

EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
TO THE SERIES 



NEW YORK 
B W. HUEBSCH 

1907 



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Copyright, 1907, by 
B. W. HUEBSCH 



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The Use of the Margin 



Introduction to the Series 

Of all problems, those of human living 
are most absorbingly interesting, just be- 
cause they never reach a final solution. 
In all our living is an unavoidable ele- 
ment of experiment. If we wait until we 
know how to live before we begin, we 
never begin. If we do not make friends 
until we know all about the laws of 
friendship and all the subtle elements in- 
volved in the adjustment of one person- 
ality to another, we die friendless. If 
we do not choose a vocation until we 
know all the laws determining the active 
expression of our capacities in some ave- 
nue of work, we fail to find our call. 

Thus it is necessary to dare something 

courageously in all actively growing 

human life. The most we can hope for 

is light enough to take the next step ; and 

7 



8 Introduction to the Series 

then we must take it bravely, trusting 
that, if we do, the light will still be one 
step in advance. 

This element of experiment in all 
human living means that life can never 
be reduced to exact science, but will 
always belong in the field of art. Now 
art is the most discouraging and the most 
exalting thing we know: the most dis- 
couraging because we never come to an 
end, every achievement being only a new 
failure on the basis of which we must 
try again. But art is also the most 
exalting thing we know — for exactly the 
same reason: we may always do better 
if we try; we reach no finished conclu- 
sion ; each attainment is an inspiration to 
fresh endeavor, and we may go on limit- 
lessly in the growth of the spirit through 
the succession of forms. 

Science, moreover, can be taught; but 
art must be learned in practice. Granted 
a good mind in teacher and student, the 
facts and laws of science may be given 



Introduction to the Series g 

over from one mind to another; but the 
most that a teacher of art can hope to 
accomplish is to suggest and stimulate 
activity and, by the sparing use of crit- 
icism, correct faults, while the art must 
be acquired by the student solely through 
his own effort and activity. 

May we not add that the highest and 
most universal fine art, gathering up all 
the others under itself and giving them 
place and meaning, is the art of living? 
The most glorious picture ever painted 
is in the color of life, on the background 
of time and nature, in the shape of a 
good deed. The most wonderful of 
songs, beyond all that ever came from 
brain of poet or lips of singer, is made 
up of melodious days in the sweet har- 
mony of a beautiful lifetime. 

The aim of this series of brief books 
is to illuminate this never-to-be-finished 
art of living. There is no thought of 
solving the problems or giving dogmatic 
theories of conduct. Rather the purpose 



io Introduction to the Series 

is to bring together in brief form the 
thoughts of some wise minds and the 
insight and appreciation of some deep 
characters, trained in the actual world of 
experience but attaining a vision of life 
in clear and wide perspective. Such 
books should act as a challenge to the 
reader's own mind, bringing him to a 
clearer recognition of the problems of 
his life and the laws governing them, 
deepening his insight into the wonder and 
meaning of life and developing an atti- 
tude of appreciation that may make pos- 
sible the wise and earnest facing of the 
deeps, dark or beautiful, in the life of 
the personal spirit. 



The Use of the Margin 

PERHAPS the most significant character- 
istic in the modern development of edu- 
cation has been the extension of the 
period of culture in the life of the indi- 
vidual. In the one direction it has been 
extended into the Kindergarten age and 
beyond to the school at the mother's 
knee; in the other direction we have 
pushed it forward to the limit of life 
itself. Thoughtful people no longer 
speak of " finishing " their education : 
each day of life is recognized as getting 
part of its best meaning as a fresh oppor- 
tunity of education. We realize that if 
growth of mind and spirit ceases, life is 
really at an end, even if physical exist- 
ence continue for a time. 

With this extension of the period of 
culture has come a changed meaning in 
ii 



1 2 The Use of the Margin 

the word education, resulting in its use 
in two widely different senses at the pres- 
ent time. In the more limited view we 
mean by education the initiation of the 
child into some part of the gathered-up 
experience of the race. This capital 
from the human past is represented by 
science and art; and our aim in the ordi- 
nary school-process is to equip the child 
with some part of this capital, so that he 
may start well on in the business of life 
and not have to learn every lesson by 
the hard, slow path of experience. 

In the larger, vaguer use of the word, 
education means much more than this, 
namely, the whole development of char- 
acter, intelligence, appreciation and power 
that comes through human living. This 
life-education is not achieved mainly in 
the schools : on the contrary it comes from 
the experiences and activities of life 
itself, while the function of the school is 
merely supplementary. There are, in- 
deed, two schoolmasters at whose feet 



The Use of the Margin 1 3 

we sit day after day, and from whom 
we receive by far the larger part of our 
life-culture : they are, Love and Work — 
the relationships we sustain to other 
individuals and the vocation through 
which we express ourselves and make our 
contribution to the world. Not only are 
these the channels through which comes 
the best of our education, but our ability 
as men and women to draw deeply from 
the life of the past depends largely upon 
the development we receive through the 
more fundamental influences of love and 
work. 

Now all human beings have access to 
these most significant channels of educa- 
tion. It is true, some are blessed with 
much deeper and richer opportunities of 
life than others, but the humblest and 
most restricted of us lives in some degree 
the great, typical experiences of human- 
ity. That is the wonder of life, that 
the universe centers in each individual 
and each is an organizing center for 



1 4 The Use of the Margin 

infinity and eternity. Every human 
being is surrounded by a little world of 
other persons to whom he is bound by 
ties, stronger or weaker; while the most 
unfortunate has some opportunity, sel- 
dom if ever exhausted, for culture and 
service through work. What then ex- 
plains the wide difference in the culture 
received by various individuals through 
these primary channels of experience? 
One man will settle down into the rou- 
tine of his calling, digging the ruts 
deeper each day, until he quite loses 
power to see out from them ; another, in 
the same vocation, shows an ability to 
make each day's work a source of new 
growth in power and in appreciation. 
So, one human being will rest passively 
on the fact of some well-established love 
or friendship, and thus lose after a time 
the beauty of the relationship and the 
meaning it once possessed for his life; 
while another actively woos the love of 
his friend every day, and so finds deep 



The Use of the Margin 1 5 

ever opening below deep in the relation- 
ship, with an ever fresh realization of 
the truth and wonder of life. 

The reason why these opposite results 
may come from the same opportunities of 
life is found chiefly in a third aspect of 
the problem of culture — the one I wish 
to consider here. After all, it is rela- 
tively slight margins of difference be- 
tween men that determine success or fail- 
ure in all phases of life. All human 
beings are much more alike than they 
are different from each other. Raise 
just a little the quality of manhood ex- 
pressed in any avenue of life, and you 
multiply many times the result finally 
achieved. You recall the definition of 
wealth and poverty as consisting respec- 
tively in being fifty dollars ahead and 
fifty dollars behind. That is just it: 
indeed, the amount might be considera- 
bly lessened. One who is a few dollars 
ahead can economize, buying when the 
price is low, supplying what is soon to 



1 6 The Use of the Margin 

be needed in advance of the actual de- 
mand for it. On the other hand, one 
who is a few dollars behind must buy in 
small quantities in the dearest market, 
procuring only what is immediately in- 
dispensable. Such an one has no possible 
chance to economize nor to procure in 
advance the slight comforts that so 
largely determine the ease and satisfac- 
tion of life. Thus a slight change in the 
relation of income to expenditure may 
turn the scale of life from success to 
failure or from failure to success. 

The same law holds with reference to 
all our problems; and thus the business 
of living — the true vocation of man — is 
much like any lesser undertaking. In 
any business there is a certain basis of 
capital on which it proceeds. On this 
basis is an income, of which a large part 
must be used merely in paying running 
expenses ; but in any business that is not a 
failure there is some margin of profit, the 
use of which determines, in the long run, 



The Use of the Margin 1 7 

the success of the undertaking. Is the 
margin carelessly wasted, or is it, in part 
at least, converted into the capital of 
the business? That is the important 
question with reference to the final out- 
come of the whole activity. 

So is it with the vocation of living. 
We come into the world with a certain 
capital of health, character, intelligence, 
talent, power. The initial capital is not 
of our choosing; yet, constantly changing 
as it is under the influence of action and 
experience, it is the basis on which we 
do business in the vocation of life. We 
have, moreover, a definite income; and 
in one aspect at least the universe has 
been just to us : we have just tw r enty-four 
hours a day income from God; and the 
wonderful thing about this income in 
time is that we can save it only by spend- 
ing it. If we would save our dollars and 
our pennies we must put them away, not 
spending them in the ordinary routine of 
life; but if we would save our hours and 



1 8 The Use of the Margin 

our moments we must spend them, and 
the more completely they are spent for 
ends that are worth while, the more they 
are converted into the capital of charac- 
ter, intelligence and power. 

We must all, moreover, spend a large 
part of our income merely in paying 
running expenses in the business of life, 
that is, in making a living. Whether we 
are rich or poor, with inherited property 
or without, the first duty of man is to 
square accounts, to leave the world as 
well off as one found it; and, indeed, he 
who fails to contribute in some form to 
society as much as he takes from it has 
failed of ordinary honesty and is to be 
regarded as a pauper or a thief whatever 
his wealth may be. Thus the demand 
that each should pay running expenses 
in the business of life is universal; yet 
for all except those at the bottom of our 
society, on whom its industrial structure 
rests most pitilessly, there is some margin 
of time each is free to spend as he 



The Use of the Margin 1 9 

pleases; and, as in any other business, 
the use of the margin goes far in deter- 
mining the ultimate success or failure in 
the business of life. 

First of all, it is in the use of the mar- 
gin that we are most free. It takes two 
to make a friendship : in every- personal 
relationship one is subject partly to the 
action of wills other than one's own. 
Even in the problem of the vocation nat- 
ural capacity and choice are not alone to 
be considered. One must consider what 
the world demands or needs, and so work 
constantly in response to objective fac- 
tors beyond one's control. In the use of 
the margin, on the other hand, we are 
free to follow our own choice and desire 
with no compulsion from external forces. 
That is why the use of the margin so 
wonderfully tests character. If love is 
the power that most fully calls out all 
the potentialities of one's being, and so 
tests more deeply than any other chal- 
lenge of life all that one has been and 



20 The Use of the Margin 

all that one is, it is the way one uses the 
margin that shows the line of movement 
and reveals the ideal. When we do what 
we like to do, because we like it, we show 
what we really care for more completely 
than at any other time. Thus state how 
you use the margin, the time that is yours 
to spend as you please, and it will not be 
difficult to tell what, sometime, you are 
going to be. Goethe understood this, 
and when he wished to show the meaning 
in the lives of the common people, he 
portrayed them, in the second scene of 
Faust, not on the six days of routine 
work under the compulsion of the wills 
of others, but on the one Easter holiday 
when they stream out through the city 
gates into the woods and fields, doing 
what they like to do because they like it, 
and so showing the ends toward which 
their lives really move. It is so with the 
individual or with the mass of men. If 
you would understand London, go to 
Hampstead Heath on Bank Holiday and 



The Use of the Margin 2 1 

then to some one of the five hundred 
music halls of London in the evening. 
Would you know the spirit of Paris, sit 
down at one of the boulevard sidewalk 
cafes and watch the people come and go, 
and then attend one of the characteristic 
theaters of Paris in the evening. It is in 
the time used freely in response to desire 
that men show the purpose of their lives. 
The use of the margin is, further, our 
one great opportunity to change the 
quality of our lives. Men differ from 
each other in quality rather than in quan- 
tity of life. It is true, some are granted 
more years than others; but after all that 
is not so important. One would rather 
live a year than vegetate for a century, 
though I grant you it would be better to 
live for a hundred years than for one, if 
we could be sure we were living all the 
time and not simply staying above the 
ground. Yet everyone interprets life in 
terms of its quality rather than its quan- 
tity. Looking back over the past one 



22 The Use of the Margin 

often finds a day or a week standing out 
longer in memory than years that pre- 
ceded and followed it. It was longer, 
in significance, one lived more, and so the 
day had deeper meaning for the spirit 
than years of mere routine existence. We 
have lived, not so many days and years, 
but so much work and love and struggle 
and joy and heart-ache. Life is always 
measured in terms of its quality by the 
standards of the soul. 

There is, moreover, one most encour- 
aging and consoling law in human devel- 
opment : we grow, not in an arithmetical, 
but in a geometrical ratio, the increment 
of new life being multiplied into the old 
and not simply added to it. A new 
thought achieved is not added to the sum 
of one's past thinking, but multiplied 
into it, becoming a new point of view, 
from which one sees in changed perspec- 
tive all other facts and ideas. One step 
up the mountain widens the horizon in 
all directions. 



The Use of the Margin 23 

A slight study of mathematics will 
show that even a large factor multiplied 
into zero will give zero; while a quite 
small factor multiplied successively into 
a series of others gives a large result in a 
comparatively short time. Thus, unless 
there is some appreciable increment of 
new life each day the result is quickly 
stagnation and spiritual death. We keep 
the good of the old day by vitalizing it 
with the new. It is no more possible to 
be good by yesterday's virtue or wise by 
yesterday's thinking than to live by yes- 
terday's fresh air and sunshine and nour- 
ishing food. The new days must bring 
its own step forward of life; and, when 
it does, the past is just so much power to 
take the step. 

It is thus the increment of new life 
multiplied into the old that so largely 
determines the whole product of life, as 
far as it is within our own control. We 
can no longer change yesterday : it arches 
over us as fate, but we can influence 



24 The Use of the Margin 

decidedly the factor of to-day's life which 
is multiplied into the whole achievement 
of the past. 

That is why the margin of time we 
have to spend as we please is so sacred; 
and the briefer the margin, the more 
precious it becomes. If you have ten 
hours a day to spend as you please, you 
may perhaps afford to waste an hour of 
it — perhaps ; but if you have only half an 
hour each day at your own free disposal, 
that half-hour becomes a sacred oppor- 
tunity of life, the chance to change the 
quality of your existence, to multiply the 
capital on which you are doing business 
in the vocation of living. And yet there 
are people foolish enough to talk of 
doing something to " pass the time," 
or — wickedly — even to " kill time " ! 
Think of it: carelessly abandoning or 
willfully murdering one's own potential 
life! 

No, the river of time sweeps on with 
regular, remorseless current. There are 



The Use of the Margin 2$ 

hours when we would give all we possess 
if we could but check the flow of its 
waters, there are other hours when 
we long to speed them more rapidly; 
but desire and effort alike are futile. 
Whether we work or sleep, are earnest 
or idle, rejoice or moan in agony, the 
river of time flows on with the same 
resistless flood; and it is only while the 
water of the river of time flows over the 
mill-wheel of to-day's life that we can 
utilize it. Once it is past, it is in the 
great, unreturning sea of eternity. Other 
opportunities will come, other waters will 
flow; but that which has slipped by un- 
used is lost utterly and will return not 
again. 

The truth I am expressing is obvious : 
everyone knows it, but, unfortunately, 
few apply it. We live only one mo- 
ment — that which is passing. No mat- 
ter how long eternity might stretch out, 
life would still be only in the passing 
moment. To be sure, man's instant dif- 



26 The Use of the Margin 

fers from the brute's in that it " looks 
before and after." The brute lives in a 
moment that excludes past and future; 
while man, reaching back through mem- 
ory and history to the inclusion of the 
remotest past, and on through hope and 
aspiration to a share in the unborn future 
that is to be, lives an instant that may 
fuse all time in its breast. Nevertheless, 
we live but one moment — this that is 
swiftly passing. People are foolish 
enough to imagine that a sum of nothings 
will give something, but their arithmetic 
is sadly at fault. The result expresses 
only what is in the units that compose it : 
a sum of wasted days will not give a year 
that is worth while, and a sum of wasted 
years will not give a significant lifetime. 
Thus, the result in the whole depends 
upon our use of the passing moment: it 
is our chance to live — our only one. 

This does not mean that all the margin 
should be spent in hard work: on the 
contrary, the best part of it should be 



The Use of the Margin 27 

spent in play. The need is only that each 
moment should count to the full for life. 
Aristotle showed long ago that play is 
the one perfect form of human action, 
and hence is more valuable even than 
work for the attainment of the highest 
ends of the spirit. Work is compelled 
action, play is free, spontaneous action. 
The compulsion in work may be due to 
the necessities of existence, the wills of 
others, or it may come from the assertion 
of our own will seeking significant ends, 
but always some such force is present; 
while when we play the natural powers of 
body and mind flow forth in joyous, free 
and spontaneous expression. The best 
part of the margin should therefore be 
spent in play; but in play that is not 
merely diversion or distraction. It is a 
serious commentary on how we play that 
we use such words for it, as if we wanted 
to be turned aside from the earnest inter- 
ests of life. True play is recreation: the 
creation anew of forces of mind and body 



28 The Use of the Margin 

through their normal expression. Such 
play is the running of a child in the fresh 
morning sunshine, the response to the 
beautiful in art, the enjoyment of love 
and friendship. 

To play well, in this sense, one must 
have worked well. If, in the child, play 
precedes work, with the adult the free 
spontaneous action is possible only after 
the hard, compelled one. If you would 
find the most miserable people in the 
world, go, not to the wretched ones 
caught in the cog-wheels of a remorseless 
industrial machine, but to the blase, 
world-weary people who, with vast 
opportunity, have refused ever to do 
anything they did not like to do, and so 
end by going over the face of the earth 
vainly seeking to escape the shadow of 
their own disgust. While if the rhythm 
of life is kept sane, the harder we wrestle 
with the severe problem of work, the 
greater is our power to enjoy the oppor- 
tunities of true play. 



The Use of the Margin 29 

Dante understood the problem : all the 
way down those darkening corridors of 
the Inferno and all the way up the ever- 
brightening terraces of the mountain of 
purification, there is just one lesson 
taught over and over again to Dante by 
Virgil: " Pensa che questo di mat non 
raggiorna " — " Think that this day will 
never dawn again." Climb, even if your 
limbs are weary and your breath comes 
short. Now is your chance to strive, 
soon it will be gone. But when Dante 
comes out on the top of the mountain 
into the garden of rest and peace, Virgil's 
word is no longer " Think that this day 
will never dawn again " ; rather it is : 

' 'Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth ; 

Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, 

And evil were it not to do its bidding, 

Thee o* er thyself I therefore crown and mitre ! ' ' 

That is, I make you your own emperor 
and your own pope, your own sovereign 
in temporal and spiritual worlds alike, 



30 The Use of the Margin 

because you love the best thing best, and 
the next in its place, and so on through all 
the succession of goods answering human 
desire. Thus, loving all things only in 
God, Dante has become of those Words- 
worth calls : 

"Glad hearts! without reproach or blot; 
Who do thy work [Duty] and know it not." 

So Dante represents himself as wan- 
dering in the beautiful garden, listening 
to the bird-songs and to the spheric mel- 
ody the wind wakens in the pine-forest, 
waiting, resting, playing, until the bright 
call of Beatrice comes to lift him in flight 
beyond flight into the very heart of the 
light in the celestial paradise. It is a 
fair symbol of human life : two worlds of 
hard, compelled action, one of free, spon- 
taneous action ; and the third comes only 
after the other two and partly because 
of them. 

If the highest use of the margin is thus 
in play, one grows increasingly skeptical 



The Use of the Margin 3 1 

as to " overwork." I have yet to see a 
student suffer merely from too much 
work, while one often sees students so 
alarmed by some anaemic medical adviser 
that they never dare work to the limit of 
their power; and yet all work below that 
level does not educate us as it might. If 
one could die of overwork it would not 
be the most inglorious of ends. I, for 
one, would far rather die of overwork 
than be scared to death. What really 
harms, however, is not work, but work 
mixed up with insane physical habits or 
work with worry. Worry is always one 
of two things: it is idiocy or insanity. 
You may take your choice, there is no 
third. Worry depresses the physical 
vitality, destroys courage, dims the 
vision of the ideal, weakens the will, 
stands in the way of realizing anything 
worth while ; and the human being who 
hopes to accomplish something will get 
worry under his feet at the earliest possi- 
ble moment. Work, on the other hand, 



32 The Use of the Margin 

good, honest, hard work, when in right 
relation, builds vitality and gives in- 
creased power. 

The difficulty is, not that people work 
too much, but that they fail to apply the 
great open secrets of wonderful accom- 
plishment in work. It is noteworthy that 
all the great secrets of human living are 
open secrets : everyone knows them ; men 
of genius apply them. For example: 
everyone knows it is impossible to think 
without fresh air; and yet it is only 
within twenty or thirty years that we 
have been building our school-houses 
with reference to ventilation. We used, 
in cold weather, to close doors and win- 
dows and heap up a big fire in the stove, 
and then, when the children became 
drowsy and stupid, we whipped them — 
surely not a very logical method of de- 
veloping intelligence ! The difficulty was 
less lack of knowledge than failure to 
apply what everyone knew. So is it with 
all the great problems of human life. 



The Use of the Margin 33 

What are the open secrets of wonder- 
ful accomplishment in work that men such 
as Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe pecu- 
liarly understood and applied? Consider 
what either of those myriad-minded men 
accomplished. Leonardo we think of as 
a painter : accidentally he was so. In his 
time painting was the great avenue of 
expression, and men of genius were nat- 
urally drawn into it. Really, Leonardo 
was a scientist: he cared to trace nature 
to her lair, to discover her at work in 
her own laboratory. We are told he 
would follow a grotesque or ugly face 
for miles — as far as he would a beautiful 
one. Once he had caught its secret, 
drawn it, he was careless of making a 
picture, of leaving behind a finished 
work of art. He was, further, a philoso- 
pher; he wrote treatises on drawing and 
painting; invented a new method of 
writing; taught a generation of artists; 
invented musical instruments and played 
wonderfully upon them; carried out 



34 The Use of the Margin 

great engineering works ; was the friend 
and counsellor of princes and statesmen; 
wrote masques for the Court at Milan; 
superintended their production : Leon- 
ardo, like Goethe, did enough in. any one 
of half-a-dozen fields to justify his place 
in the world as a man of genius. How 
did he achieve it all in one brief life- 
time? 

There are, I believe, two great open 
secrets that explain the achievement of 
men such as Leonardo and Goethe. The 
first is so simple you may be surprised 
when I state it: it is — concentration — 
putting all the mind you have on the task 
in hand while you do it, and when that 
is no longer possible, turning to some- 
thing else. I suppose everyone imagines 
he understands this : try it, the next book 
you read — not the next mass of printed 
pages, but the next book seriously chal- 
lenging your thought. If you have not 
practised recently the art of conscious con- 
centration, you will perhaps find that five 



The Use of the Margin 35 

or ten minutes is as long as you can hold 
your mind intensely and actively on the 
task in hand. Stop then, and go out to 
take a walk; return and try again. In a 
month you will have multiplied the time 
you can work in that intense fashion. In 
a year, you have changed the quality of 
your intellectual life, which is as good as 
multiplying the quantity. To live with 
twice the significance is worth at least as 
much as living twice as long. 

One ought never to read merely pas- 
sively, unless the purpose be to respond 
to artistic beauty. Where knowledge 
and ideas are the end in view it is absurd 
to read every word on every page. Sup- 
pose, for example, one takes up what 
is to one a new field of reading: 
let me say Sociology. The first book 
one takes up must be read through 
word for word. The second, however, 
repeats in facts and ideas a consid- 
erable portion of the first; and when 
a dozen books have been mastered, the 



36 The Use of the Margin 

next contains comparatively little that 
has not already been learned. To read 
that next volume as the first in the field 
was read is simply to waste human life. 
One must learn to read actively, to see 
at a glance what a page contains that one 
does not already know, to divine from 
index, preface and table of contents what 
a volume contains that is worth study. 

There is an interesting story told of 
Napoleon when he was a boy at the mili- 
tary school. It is said he attempted a 
certain mathematical problem that no 
teacher or pupil in the school had ever 
been able to solve. He isolated himself 
in his room for seventy-two hours, and 
came out with the problem solved. Now 
that was not a wise thing to do : if the 
problem had not given way, in time 
Napoleon's physical constitution would, 
and it was seriously endangering his 
health to work for seventy-two hours 
upon one problem. Yet the power of 
concentration and force of will that made 



The Use of the Margin 37 

it possible for Napoleon to hold his mind 
for so long a time continuously upon one 
problem was the force of will and energy 
of character that swept all Europe with 
the armies of France and changed the 
map of the world; and I have often 
thought if you and I could bring to bear 
upon the causes in which we believe such 
energy, character and force of will, what 
might we not accomplish? We could 
change, not the map of Europe, but the 
spiritual aspects of the life of mankind. 
Every college teacher understands my 
meaning. The student comes in the 
morning saying: "I spent four hours 
on my lessons yesterday," and the poor 
instructor groans inwardly. For what 
does the student's complaint mean? Is 
it that he actually worked four hours 
on the lesson at the top of his bent, and 
perhaps failed to get it? If so, one of 
these results follows: either the student 
does not belong in that class or the 
instructor was criminal. Does it mean, 



38 The Use of the Margin 

on the other hand, that the student sat at 
the window, with an apple and a book; 
ate a little and read a little; looked out 
the window, vaguely wondering why 
Miss Brown was walking with Mr. 
Jones, and whether he would get 
through in time for the party in the 
evening; and then glanced at the clock 
to note that four hours had passed? On 
investigation with my own students, I 
found it usually the second case and not 
the first. To say that you spent four 
hours on a lesson means nothing: how 
much intellectual energy did you spend? 
Did you work for one half-hour with 
all your might ? I have known students 
to go through the common schools and 
the high school and graduate from col- 
lege, without ever once in their entire 
student life working for fifteen minutes 
at the top of their intellectual power; 
and yet it is only such work that de- 
velops the mind in the highest degree. 
Thus the first open secret of wonderful 



The Use of the Margin 39 

achievement is concentration; and it is 
one that can be learned and applied in 
the wise use of the margin. 

The second secret, even more than the 
first, is the one such men as Leonardo 
and Goethe have especially understood, 
and whose consistent application explains 
their astounding achievement. It is the 
secret of turning from one form of ac- 
tion to another, without wasteful fric- 
tion, and making the second action rest 
you from the first. Again you say, 
" how simple, and how universally un- 
derstood." Yes! but how seldom con- 
sistently practised! Take an example 
again from the field of intellectual life 
where the application of this principle 
should be especially evident: what day 
in the week are there the poorest lessons 
in every school in America? Monday 
morning; and it is worse in the college 
than in the primary grade. Why? 
Surely Monday morning, when the col- 
lege student has had Friday evening, all 



40 The Use of the Margin 

day Saturday, not to mention Sunday, in 
which to get his lessons, should show the 
best work of the week. Yet habitually 
the student comes unprepared. Give him 
a few hours of regular mill-wheel grind, 
and he does fairly well; but give him 
plenty of time and opportunity, and he 
fails to use it. There is no excuse : it is 
mere dead inertia; and if you want the 
plainer word for inertia, it is laziness. 

Again, what three weeks in the year 
are there the poorest lessons in every col- 
lege in America? I have studied the 
question somewhat; and I am not quite 
sure whether it is the last three before 
the summer vacation, or the first three 
in the autumn, after its close ; but I think 
it is the latter. Yet surely, after the long 
summer vacation the student should re- 
turn so refreshed by other forms of 
activity that the opening weeks of the 
term should be the most valuable of his 
year. He has been to the sea-shore or 
the mountains ; or he has been working on 



The Use of the Margin 41 

a threshing machine, selling books to an 
unsuspecting public or doing some other 
semi-honorable labor to get money for 
his next year's course; and thus he should 
turn again to intellectual work with 
splendid vigor and make the first days 
count to the full. Yet the student com- 
plains: "It takes me a month to get 
back into my studies." He should be 
ashamed to make such a dishonorable 
confession until he has done his best to 
conquer the fault. Again, there is no 
excuse for the failure: it is due to mere 
inertia — laziness. 

Next to the first three weeks in the 
autumn it is the last three before the 
summer vacation that are most nearly 
wasted in every college in our land. We 
do what we can to hold the student up 
to the end: refuse degrees and credits 
unless he remains faithfully ; multiply ex- 
aminations that should have been obso- 
lete long ago, and resort to all manner 
of petty tricks. It does little good; the 



42 The Use of the Margin 

last weeks the work ravels out and goes 
to pieces. And it is not that we close 
too late: if we stopped three weeks 
earlier it would be the same. It is that 
because we are going to stop soon we 
begin to let go in advance, and so waste 
the last part of one action and the first 
part of the next in mere useless friction. 
What place on the program of a 
ministers' meeting or a teachers' meeting 
does every speaker dread? The last 
half hour before closing. Now minis- 
ters and teachers are unusually cultivated 
people with a relatively high degree of 
self-control ; yet even with such hearers, 
the fact that the audience is to go soon 
makes it begin to leave some time in 
advance. Even if people are too cour- 
teous actually to get up and go out, their 
minds wander, they go in spirit; and 
thus, again, waste the last part of the 
one form of action and the first part of 
the next, through carelessness. It is so 
with a Wagner opera or a Shakespeare 



The Use of the Margin 43 

drama. To be sure, there is the subur- 
banite, with his pitiless last train, and it 
is not pleasant to stay unprepared in the 
city overnight in evening dress. Watch, 
however, the people who spoil the last 
twenty minutes of noble music or impres- 
sive drama : they do not look like subur- 
banites, but are rather the people who 
because they are to go soon begin going 
now, and so injure the joy and culture of 
themselves and of their neighbors. 

I have been making some observations 
of people who travel, and have come to 
the conclusion that enough time is wasted 
on railway trains and at railway stations 
to carry on all the educational activities 
of America if that time could be utilized 
with some degree of intelligence. I do 
not refer to the people who loaf about 
the stations : let us assume that they are 
hopeless and beneath consideration; but 
to those who are there for some serious 
purpose. Your train, for example, is 
late: what do you do? Walk up and 



44 The Use of the Margin 

down the platform, examine your watch, 
ask the agent if the train is near: it will 
not put steam in the boiler, bring the train 
a moment sooner ; it is cultivating a kind 
of nervous prostration, letting your en- 
ergy run off uselessly in every direction. 
Your train comes; you enter it for the 
hours of your journey; you cannot read 
much without hurting your eyes; nature 
goes by, stimulating to your imagination : 
it is one of the best occasions in the world 
to think. Yet what do people do ? They 
buy a later and later edition of some 
sensational newspaper just to keep from 
thinking — to let the mind be titillated 
by a series of vagrant fancies and reports 
of incidents that come and go. Thank 
heaven they go ! Think what it would 
be if they all stayed in the mind. The 
fault is again mere careless failure to 
use the full opportunity for one action, 
and turn from it, without wasteful fric- 
tion, to the next. 

Both secrets of wonderful achieve- 



The Use of the Margin 45 

ment might be summed up in Goethe's 
maxim : " Ohne Hast, ohne Rast " — 
" Unhasting, Unresting " — to work 
without the heedless waste that defeats 
its own end, yet with never the rest of 
idleness, finding refreshment in changed 
activity — such is the secret of great 
achievement. 

Yet between man and what he hopes 
to accomplish in either work or play may 
intervene a third element — dissipation. 
When the word is used, do not imagine 
that mere insane physical habits are 
meant: they are bad enough, and the 
ruin they cause is only too obvious; but 
dissipation in any aspect of life means 
the same thing — wasting one's capital 
stock. One should spend one's income, 
as we have seen — all of it; but the man 
who gets to spending his capital is 
headed for bankruptcy. Nature never 
forgives: the word forgiveness is not 
written in her vocabulary. If you spend 
the capital of physical health you go into 



46 The Use of the Margin 

some degree of physical bankruptcy; if 
you waste the capital of mental, emo- 
tional or moral health, in the same way 
you invite bankruptcy. It is true, other 
capital may be won, wasted opportunities 
may not abrogate new chances; but the 
drafts we make always come due and 
must be paid relentlessly. 

There are certain forms of dissipation 
especially menacing at the present time 
because growing on us as a people. One 
of the worst of them in the intellectual 
world has already been hinted — the mis- 
use of newspapers. I believe in news- 
papers: they serve two ends: they are 
our forum for current opinion and our 
text-book of current history. No one 
can be aware of what the world is doing 
and thinking without making use of 
newspapers. On the other hand, it is 
an unusually good newspaper that is 
worth more than twenty minutes of the 
day of a busy man or woman; and to 
spend all the time one has for intellec- 



The~ Use of the Margin 47 

tual culture in going aimlessly over the 
list of crimes and casualties in the news- 
papers is to cultivate a dangerous form 
of intellectual dissipation, sure in the 
long run to destroy the power of logical 
thinking altogether. 

Great editors have understood this: 
we are told that, with scarcely an excep- 
tion, each has cultivated some one field 
of scientific investigation. That is, the 
great editor has been so conscious that 
his work of going over all the chaotic 
events of the world, with the aim of 
bringing them into some order and giv- 
ing the semi-digested result to his read- 
ers, was intellectually disintegrating, that 
he followed, aside from his vocation, 
some one strong intellectual interest 
capable of giving order and unity to his 
mind. What is true of the editor is true 
in a measure of his readers; and while 
there are times when it may be justifiable 
to enter on an intellectual debauch — even 
to take a Sunday newspaper and spend 



48 The Use of the Margin 

two hours in going over, in a half-som- 
nolent fashion, all the fact, invention and 
fancy it contains — to make such an opiate 
the daily bread of the intellectual life is, 
in the end, to destroy the power of logical 
and active thinking. 

Another form of dissipation, growing 
upon us as a people to-day, is in reading 
nothing but cheap magazines. I believe 
in inexpensive literature — that the best 
books should be brought within the reach 
of the humblest purse; but when cheap- 
ness of price and general accessibility 
go along with cheapness of quality the 
result is disastrous. I was told by the 
editor of one of the most widely sold 
American magazines that it was no use 
to give the American public a serious 
article between the first of April and the 
first of October, I do not believe the 
statement; but he says it is true, and 
he sells his magazine — amazingly. If 
even a fraction of the indictment is true, 
think what it means : between the first of 



The Use of the Margin 49 

April and the first of October, lie the 
months when we might read serious 
articles — most of us. It is the dull sea- 
son in business, the general period of 
vacations; and yet our intellectual caterer 
tells us that when we might read serious 
articles we will not, but prefer intellectual 
dissipation. After all, it is books above 
our level that educate us. Books on our 
level flatter us, make us think we are wise 
when we are not, while books above our 
level act as a challenge to the intellect. 
One who comes back even from an unsuc- 
cessful wrestle with the Divine Comedy 
or the second part of Goethe's Faust will 
find whole acres of modern literature no 
longer tempting to him; he has grown 
past their need and service. 

A third form of intellectual dissipa- 
tion is found to-day in public lectures. 
These may be made a most helpful form 
of public education, extending oppor- 
tunities of culture to people already in 
the business of life. It is the one who 



50 The Use of the Margin 

gives the lecture, however, who gets the 
main education from it (which is some 
compensation in the lecturer's harassing 
vocation) ; and if the one who listens 
to the carefully prepared thought of 
another is to receive anything like the 
same culture as the one who is thinking 
on his feet, the mind of the hearer must 
work on the same plane of intellectual 
activity with the one who speaks, and not 
be a mere recipient sponge into which 
the waters (?) of the intellect enter only 
to pass out again. Moreover, for each 
hour of listening, even active listening, 
to the carefully formulated thought of 
another, there should be at least two 
hours of hard study and thought at 
home. Only on these conditions can 
public lecture work be made other than 
one more polite form of dissipation. 

Thus one may dissipate in the most 
beautiful things, in art, in music, poetry, 
love, religion. Wherever emotional 
stimulation is received without finding 



The Use of the Margin 5 1 

expression in action, an inner ferment re- 
sults that leaves the last state of the 
man worse than his first. One may shed 
so many tears over the imaginary charac- 
ters of novels that one's eyes are dry 
towards the people who starve, physic- 
ally or spiritually, in the next street. One 
may see so constantly imaginary charac- 
ters on the stage, without ever making 
the connection between the symbol and 
the real life the drama symbolizes and 
interprets, that one loses sympathy for 
the same sufferings in the actual world. 
Wherever the beauty of the arts is 
sought as a mere selfish indulgence and 
the stimulus from it finds no expression 
in bettered action, the result is a very 
refined but most positive deterioration in 
moral character. 

Professor James has said it in his 
admirable whimsical way in the ethical 
sermon he calls a chapter on Habit in his 
Psychology: " Even the habit of exces- 
sive indulgence in music, for those who 



52 The Use of the Margin 

are neither performers themselves nor 
musically gifted enough to take it in a 
purely intellectual way, has probably a 
relaxing effect upon the character. . . . 
The remedy would be, never to suffer 
one's self to have an emotion at a con- 
cert, without expressing it afterward in 
some active way. Let the expression be 
the least thing in the world — speaking 
genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's 
seat in a horse-car, if nothing more 
heroic offers — but let it not fail to take 
place." The idea is not a jest: do you 
ever listen to beautiful music without a 
certain exaltation of spirit, a feeling that 
now you could really achieve the ideal 
of which you have always dreamed? If 
you do go home and fail to express that 
powerful appeal in some form of helpful 
action, you would distinctly better not 
have gone to the concert. 

One may apply the thought even to 
religion. You go to church on Sunday. 
The music puts you into a receptive, med- 



The Use of the Margin 5 3 

itative mood. The minister says some- 
thing that touches your mind and heart. 
You go away saying that you feel 
14 good." If you put off that good feel- 
ing with your Sunday gown or coat for 
the six days that follow, you would dis- 
tinctly better not have gone to church. 
The good feeling was simply so much 
inspiration to helpful action, and when 
not embodied in conduct tends to a dissi- 
pation of the energies of character. 

There is a closed circle psychologically 
between reception and expression; and 
we break that circle habitually only with 
grave moral as well as other risk. Every 
stimulus from the world of sensation 
passes along some nerve-tract to a sensor 
center of the brain, over to a motor cen- 
ter, and out along some other nerve- 
tract to expression. Your friend enters 
the room, and you spring to your feet, 
while a smile comes to your face ; or, you 
slip on a banana-peel and fall, and a 
pained look comes to your face and pos- 



54 The Use of the Margin 

sibly tears to your eyes. To be sure, we 
learn often to inhibit the more normal 
expression and switch off the stimuli to 
other channels. One doesn't always 
smile (unless one is a Japanese) no mat- 
ter who enters the room, and the fallen 
wayfarer learns to inhibit the tears that 
might shame him to the passer-by. Yet 
the closed psychological circle remains, 
and when one habitually switches off the 
most powerful emotional and intellectual 
stimuli from the field of active expres- 
sion in conduct, one becomes a Hamlet 
or Amiel in whom noble feelings and 
ideas effervesce — brilliantly, it is true, 
but with little effective application to 
life. 

Indeed, one may dissipate even in serv- 
ice of others, if one responds to every 
whimsical appeal from without, with no 
attention to the central aim of life. For 
example, suppose that you are a school- 
teacher, engaged in the work of control- 
ling and guiding twenty, thirty, forty, 



The Use of the Margin 55 

sometimes (mistakenly enough) even 
more little minds, each with energy run- 
ning off in every channel ; your aim being 
not to suppress activity but to direct 
it so that at the end of the day some- 
thing significant has been attained. It 
is work so exhausting that it is no won- 
der the teacher goes home at night 
utterly tired out, ready to sink into bed 
in the sleep of nervous exhaustion. But 
there are those hundred spelling-papers 
to be gone over and corrected and under- 
lined with red ink! Now it is a good 
thing to examine spelling-papers: it is 
paying tithes of mint, anise and cummin, 
and there are times when such tithes 
should be paid. Sometimes, indeed, one 
must examine spelling-papers, owing to 
the unwisdom of some superior official, 
when in the nature of the case it would 
be better not to do so; but there are 
times when one can get out of it and 
when it is right to do so. Suppose you 
examine those spelling-papers and care- 



56 The Use of the Margin 

fully underline the faulty words with red 
ink, and return to the school-room in the 
morning so on edge with nervous weari- 
ness that the children are at once on edge 
also and seeking opportunities for dis- 
obedience : do you imagine you can teach 
anything? Suppose for once you were 
to take those spelling-papers and put 
them into the fire — let them be if not 
u thoughts that breathe," at least " words 
that burn "I Go out under the stars, 
hunt up your friend or read the last novel, 
go to bed early and sleep soundly with a 
clear conscience all night long. Then in- 
deed one might return to the school-room 
in the morning feeling that teaching is 
not such miserable work after all, rather 
liking children, interested somewhat in 
the day's activities : then indeed one may 
teach something. It is the old lesson: 
" these ought ye to have done and not 
to leave the other undone." One must 
pay tithes of mint, anise and cummin, 
but not to the extent of neglecting the 



The Use of the Margin $j 

weightier matters of the law ; and among 
the weightiest of all weighty matters of 
the law in any vocation, for one who 
hopes to achieve something worth while, 
is to be a sane, balanced, wise man or 
woman, living steadily toward some cen- 
tral aim. Thus, for one who hopes, in 
either work or play, to achieve something 
significant, dissipation — the wasting of 
one's capital stock — must, in any aspect 
of life, be rigorously excluded. 

For those who would use the margin, 
whether in work or play, so as to convert 
it into the capital of character, intelli- 
gence and power there are certain closing 
suggestions. Some part of the margin 
should be spent in following one definite 
intellectual interest continuously through 
the years. It is amazing what an influ- 
ence on the whole intellectual and moral 
life such an interest consecutively fol- 
lowed will contribute, even when the time 
devoted to it is very brief. Fifteen 
minutes a day, or a half-hour three times 



58 The Use of the Margin 

2l week, devoted to one definite study, 
will make one a master in that field in a 
dozen years. Such work is sowing seed 
corn in the furrow of daily life, which 
will bear fruit far beyond the original 
planting. Not the least valuable result 
of such study is the unifying and order- 
ing of the intellectual life, so that each 
event and experience is brought into 
place and relation and made to yield its 
own contribution to the whole. 

Further, in these days of severe pres- 
sure and over-hasty action, some part of 
the margin should be spent in cultivating 
the lost art of solitude and meditation. 
To see how studiously people strive to 
avoid being alone is to be led to believe 
that they fear something vacant or 
terrible when they are alone. Yet to live 
well, one must be friends with oneself; 
for we gather in solitude the strength 
and balance that enable us to return 
helpfully to the world. Emerson put it, 
" Men descend to meet." Certainly, 



The Use of the Margin 59 

ideal society is limited to two; when a 
third enters, the plane of conversation 
becomes lighter and less earnest ; and the 
only way in which a roomful of people 
can discuss serious questions is by tem- 
porarily resolving itself into two: one 
who for the time being speaks and one 
who listens. Even then the speaker 
can voice what is deepest in his heart 
only if he speak to the ideal apprecia- 
tive listener, who may not be present 
at all. 

Another part of the margin should be 
spent in cultivating the all but lost art 
of friendship. We have much society, 
but little friendship; yet it is the close 
personal associations that give vitality 
and depth to life. One of the strangest 
perversities of human nature is that 
which leads us to give our best selves to 
the people who count least, and to con- 
sider ourselves justified in spending our 
meanness and irritation on those we love 
best and who are most deeply influenced 



60 The Use of the Margin 

by our lives. We put on our best dress 
morally, as well as physically, and strive 
to meet at high-water mark the stranger 
within our gates; and then we are in- 
clined to remove both types of garment 
when we turn to the members of our 
family circle and the friends most inti- 
mately bound to our lives. If you have 
twenty letters to answer, you are apt to 
begin with the one from the person you 
know least, and leave your intimate 
friend's letter unanswered at the bottom 
of the pile because he will understand. 
To be sure, he will understand, but is it 
not mean to take it out of him because 
he does? If we could not be courteous 
all the time (which might be possible) 
would it not be better to spend our dis- 
courtesy on the stranger within our gates, 
who comes and goes and does not care 
so much, and save every finest flower of 
courtesy for those whose lives are often 
lifted or broken by our chance action or 
word? It is true one does not want to 



The Use of the Margin 6 1 

wear Sunday clothes all the time, and it 
is one of the beautiful joys of personal 
life that we may rest back quietly on the 
loving appreciation of those who stand 
nearest us; but one should never appear 
in moral undress before the intimate 
associates of one's life. Courtesy is the 
atmosphere of personal life, covering the 
bare rocks of human reality with a gar- 
ment of living beauty. It is impossible 
to live in hard contact with those bare, 
unclothed realities; and one high use of 
the margin is to enable us to cultivate the 
atmosphere of courtesy that enables us to 
recover the art of friendship in personal 
life. 

There is one friend available in the 
margin of life who never intrudes on our 
moods, but is always ready to respond: 
this great, beautiful, sublime Nature- 
mother, who knows when to speak and 
charm us with the music of her countless 
voices ; and who knows when her human 
child, tired with the work of the long 



6 2 The Use of the Margin 

day, asks only the sweet peace he finds 
on her breast. Some part of the margin 
should be spent in responding to the 
exalting and calming influences of the 
Nature-world. 

What is true of the influence of 
Nature applies also to human art. The 
greatest value of the fine arts lies, not in 
any lesson they may teach, nor even in 
the soothing memories of beauty they 
may leave with us, but in the exalting 
power they exercise over the human 
spirit. Through those creations of art 
which represent the highest achievement 
of the spirit of man we are lifted out of 
the submerging stream of daily events 
and enabled to look down on the plain of 
life Jfrom the mountain-heights, with 
wide perspective and calm vision. 
Herein indeed lies the supreme service 
of art to the spirit of man. To climb 
Dante's sheer peak and look off from 
its cold isolation; to wander among the 
tangle of mountains of Goethe's genius ; 



The Use of the Margin 63 

to look off from the summits of Shake- 
speare's art, with now a wild reach of 
Alpine splendor and now a quiet valley, 
sun-lit and filled with warm life, opening 
to our gaze; to feel the storm upon the 
Himalayan heights of Beethoven; and 
watch the light and shadow play over 
the forest-clad peaks of Michael Angelo ; 
— is it not to get the distance of the spirit 
in relation to the overwhelming mass of 
details filling our daily lives? 

If then we will habitually use in such 
ways the margin that is ours to spend as 
we please, shall we not increase immeas- 
urably the capital, in character, intelli- 
gence and appreciation, of our lives? We 
may hope then to be lifted out of the 
routine of daily existence into wide unity 
with the best in nature and man. The 
deepened capacities of spirit will bring an 
added return through all that we expe- 
rience in our business and in the relations 
we sustain to others. Thus shall we grow 
in power to fulfill the true vocation of 



64 The Use of the Margin 

man — noble living, and find unfailing 
and increasing joy and interest in ever 
learning the never finished art of life. 



WHERE 

KNOWLEDGE 

FAILS 

By EARL BARNES 

{In The Art of Life Series) 



T^ROM the pen of a scientific thinker, 
■*• one whose attitude is liberal yet rev- 
erent, presenting the outlines of a belief in 
which the relations of knowledge and faith 
are clearly established. While his platform 
is certain to be seriously challenged, it is 
nevertheless true that many will find in it a 
solution of the most important problem pres- 
ent-day men and women have to cope with. 

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